More than 20 years after his arrival in France, the padel is booming on the territory, at the same time as it seduces the whole world, with more and more practitioners. According to a survey carried out in October 2022 by Union Sport & Cycle, there were 366.000 players of padel in France, an increase of 41% compared to the previous year.

Clubs and tracks are multiplying, competition is taking on more and more space and the padel also benefits from certain advantages over tennis: less elitist, more friendly, more technically affordable, etc.

Several reasons may explain why the padel is becoming prominent in the sports landscape.

People sports

Just take a look on social networks to understand: the padel caught the eye of celebrities and today represents a benchmark sports practice for this category of people, in the same way as tennis or golf.

Among the celebrities, retired athletes are a large clientele and some invest a lot in the development of sport: Zinédine Zidane, David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Francesco Totti, Tony Parker, Teddy Riner...

Zidane padel

Le padel settles in the media

The explosion of padel is accompanied by an increasingly strong presence in the media. The influence of sport is growing day by day around important players in the discipline, such as Cyril Hanouna. The C8 host is a constant spotlight for sport, notably with his show Top 100 goal and his outings on his program Touche Pas à Mon Poste, seen regularly by more than two million people.

Since 2021, Canal+ has obtained the broadcasting rights for the World Padel Tour and all competitions are now broadcast, which makes winning the padel credibility and hype with all articles, videos and other types of communication. The general public now has several means of discovering the discipline.

Seurin Hanouna 4PADEL Strasbourg
Cyril Hanouna and French player Julien Seurin

The new sport of investors

For five years, the money injected into the padel becomes colossal, like the actors who are behind these investments: Fabrice Pastor, Monegasque businessman, current boss and main shareholder of the A1 circuit; Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, president of Paris-Saint-Germain and Qatar Sports Investment, the circuit's main shareholder Premier Padel ; Estrella Damm, main shareholder of the World Padel Tour.

In 2022, we expected a global investment for the padel in France up toone billion euros over four years. Today, we do not hesitate to bet financially on the development of padel, whether municipal or private projects.

QSI Nasser FIP ppa

The constraints and negative sides of padel exist, but for the moment the novelty takes precedence over all that and the virus of padel continues to spread, without it being known for the moment how far it can go.

Martin Schmuda

A competitive tennis player, Martin discovered the padel in 2015 in Alsace and appeared in a few tournaments in Paris. Today a journalist, he deals with current affairs padel while continuing its rise in the world of the little yellow ball!

On the same subject

Tags